I'm a huge fan of improvingbirth.org. When I was a wee fledgling in the world of birth and birth advocacy, they had information on hand that led me to the dark side, or the...like... empowered side... :) of birth.
They recently (today) shared an article that claims most infants make their appearance at 8am. And most commonly on weekdays. This made no sense to me. Birth is chaotic (commonly) and irratic in timing (ask any mom who really wanted a due date baby).
I trust improvingbirth to give me accurate information. So why would this report say that children are born at 8am? On weekdays? Babies don't have schedules. They are squirmy gushy little beings of smelly goodness (baby fever anyone?).
The article absolutely states that this information was collected across the board: hospital, home, cesarean, induction, natural, all of it. So I decided to dig a little deeper. The article claims that c-section rates are 32% across the nation. I happen to know they are slightly higher in my neck of the woods. But basically, that article is implying that medical intervention is skewing natural birth cycles. Most babies born without medical intervention are born at night.
There are two reasons that a baby would be born in the morning:
1. Medical intervention (C-section/induction). **Shocker** I'm not a c-section basher. Stuff happens and we are all blessed to have access to this emergency care. However, let's be real. If a mom has been laboring for a long time, she will fatigue and will need help or, in some cases, convinced she needs help. All research shows that after intervention (lets be conservative and assume pitocin or other forms of induction), the risk for c-section increases dramatically [1].
2. Delayed/difficult/regressing labor. If you prefer to believe that regressing labor doesn't exist, let's just pretend for now that it's not written down and I'll express my thoughts on the topic later. If a woman has slow progression of labor due to anxiety, 'back labor', structural complications, or is forced to labor in a less-than-ideal birthing position, the delivery can be prolonged.
Guess what? Most of that second reason can happen and does happen outside of the hospital as well. The other interesting thing of note in the chart above is that the hospital birth line has well defined peaks, as where the out-of-hospital births don't really have peaks, but instead gentle "hills" of commonality.
All this to say, it would be interesting to see how breastfeeding and other baby basics (eat, poop, sleep) are even temporarily affected by an altered natural birth time. I'll keep you all posted if I find a study, and hope you'll do the same.
Cheers!
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3751192/
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